|
"A gripping tale…”
By James Rupert, Washington Post
Read
full review
Read full review
" Into Tibet brings alive the remarkable
adventure of two American Heinrich Harrers and an event the CIA
would still, more than 50 years later, like to keep quiet.."
Bruce Barcott, Outside Magazine
"A fascinating, groundbreaking work on a controversial subject
about
which few readers will be familiar. Packed with vital new
information and insights, Into Tibet fills a blank space
in the
hidden history of the Cold War."
By Chris Patsilelis, Houston Chronicle
Read full review
“Laird has gone to great lengths to penetrate the walls of
secrecy the CIA constructed to hide the identity and the
activities of Douglas Mackiernan, the first of its agents to be
killed on duty.”
by Lucian W. Pye, Foreign Affairs
Read full review
"A scrupulously documented account of Cold War intrigue. . . .
[Provides] a detailed view into the CIA's shadowy world and the
havoc it wreaks on individual lives. . . . A grippingly good
narrative."
By Luis H. Francia, Village Voice
Read full review
"One spring day in 1950, an American was
shot and beheaded while attempting to reach Tibet from far
northwestern China. He was Douglas Mackiernan, the first CIA
agent killed in the line of duty. Mackiernan had been spying in
China. Ironically, it was Tibetans who killed him. Details of
his murder were kept secret for fifty years. Uranium, secret
codes, the sticky fingers of Madame and Chiang Kai-Shek -- it's
all in Thomas Laird's Into Tibet (Grove, $26). Laird, an
American who has lived in Nepal "on the fault line between two
worlds" for thirty years, wrote part of this Cold War
page-turner in Albany."
BY ANNELI RUFUS, East Bay Express
Read full review
"presents his story as a spy novel, complete with reconstructed
dialog, bureaucratic infighting, cinematic pacing, and crackling
action. Much of the information is reconstructed from interviews
and archival research and is hard to authenticate; still, the
overall story of this incredible expedition and its political
consequences rings true."
Library Journal, By Hayford,
The author's long-term residence in Nepal provides "a
significant qualification for his wide-ranging and startling
look into the activities of the agent behind the unnamed First
Star on the CIA's Wall of Honor." This "[p]rodigiously
researched" work provides "a thoroughly fascinating and
informative read."
AFIO WIN
Read review
It took six years of what he calls "unbelievably persistent"
journalism, but Thomas Laird finally got his story…. As a
storyteller, Laird..is at his best in his descriptions of the
seemingly endless crossing of Tibet, a place where he feels so
at home:
"They rode across a yellow plain, yellow with the short fuzz of
dead grass. They rode toward a line of twenty-thousand foot
mountains in front of them. No tree, no shrub, nothing
interrupted the flat yellow plain of dead grass except the
mountains. They rode through a vast tawny valley, across the
plain between ranges of mountains until they came to the next
line of mountains -- the journey itself was cold, windy,
interminable, and mundane."
Laird also deftly re-creates the high altitude drama of the
fatal meeting between Mackiernan's expedition team and the
Tibetan border guards ordered to shoot unwelcome foreign
invaders. Told twice, from different points of view, this
charged and tragic incident parallels the larger and equally
tragic saga of U.S.-Tibet relations.
By Whitney Stewart
Contributing writer, The Times-Picayune
Read full review
"…Into Tibet" stands as the definitive account of a shadowy
series of events that read like an early spy thriller.
Unfortunately, the repercussions of those events have cost
countless lives and continue to reverberate today in China's
control of Tibet. Today, traditional Tibetan culture is being
obliterated and Tibetans are becoming a minority in their own
country as Chinese settlers arrive in huge numbers.”
by Rick Sullivan, The Grand Rapids Press
Read full review
“Unwittingly the guards had killed the first CIA officer to die
in the field. His name was Douglas Mackiernan and he was
anxiously awaited by the Tibetan government for his anticipated
help in organizing resistance against the impending Communist
Chinese invasion. The only things the guards could send to Lhasa
were the two live prisoners and the heads of Mackiernan and the
two other men they'd shot. They had severed the heads and
stuffed them in saddle bags as prizes leaving the corpses to
Tibet's vultures. How Mackiernan came to meet this grisly fate
is the subject of a fascinating new book by Nepal-based reporter
and photographer Thomas Laird on the CIA's involvement at the
onset of the Cold War in China's far northwest.”
By Max Woodworth, Taipei Times
Read review
Read review
The Gambit, New Orleans
Read review
"Laird does an exemplary job of investigating, reporting, and
shaping the
events and personalities that compose the tragic story."
—Bob Shacochis, author of The Immaculate Invasion
"Laird has pieced together another unheralded saga of the Cold
War. . . .
Laird's account is more than just an exposé of the early CIA. He
provides
insights into the CIA's early effort to maintain an independent
Tibet. . . .
Laird [also] provides enough action to satisfy most readers
interested in
the Cold War."–C. C. Lovett, CHOICE Magazine
"An intriguing account of a tragic adventure."
–Kathleen Hipson, The Tampa Tribune
Recent Magazine stories by Thomas Laird
TOP OF THE
PAGE |
